ReadWriteWeb

A funny thing happened on the way to the airport. I searched through the iTunes App Store on my iPhone for a Southwest app that allowed for flight check-ins, only to find that it didn't exist. I don't know why I expected it to be there, but I did. Southwest is one of those companies that seems so "with it" when it comes to this digital age we live in. They have a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a flickr account, and a YouTube channel. So why no iPhone app?

We are still hoping to see a full office suite on the iPhone, but while there are already some apps that allow you to edit documents on the phone, the device's size currently makes it more useful for reading documents than actually creating them. Today, Soonr launched an application in the App Store (iTunes link) that allows you to sync files from your desktop to Soonr's online storage and then view them on your iPhone. Soonr can handle over 40 different file types and provides you with 500 megabytes of free online storage.

Ever since Apple finally lifted the NDA covering the iPhone SDK, a small number of developers have started to open source their native iPhone apps. Today, Freshbooks, a popular online time-tracking and invoicing service, joined this group by open sourcing its native iPhone application. Other open source iPhone apps include Wordpress, the applications from Apps Amuck's 31 Days of iPhone Apps, and a collection of source code for handling the iPhone's touch controls.

Have you ever wondered what iPhone apps are hot in Japan? If you're attending this year's MacWorld conference in San Francisco, you'll have a chance to find out. There, Nobuyuki Hayashi, a Japanese Mac and iPhone tech journalist and blogger, is hosting an event called "Japan iPhone Apps: State of the Market," which will be held on Wednesday, Jan 7th. If you can't make the event, here's a sneak preview of the apps being featured.

If you imagine Brian Eno doing a Twitter-like anonymous messaging application for the iPhone, and then mix in a good dose of PostSecret and a somewhat belated holiday spirit, you might just come up with something akin to Smule's Zephyr. Zephyr (iTunes link) lets you write messages and draw pictures with snow on your screen and simultaneously creates sounds based on how quickly you draw. After you finish your drawing, you can then anonymously release it to the rest of the world. Zephyr is available for the iPhone and the iPod touch and costs $0.99.

Every year we do a review of the top Internet companies, to identify the ones we think had the biggest impact. Today we're announcing the Best BigCo of 2008 and next week we'll announce Best LittleCo and Most Promising Company - all selected by the ReadWriteWeb writers.

In 2007 the Best BigCo went to Facebook, due to the launch and subsequent impact of its development platform. Google won Best BigCo of 2006 and 2004. In between, in 2005, Yahoo! won the award. This year we've chosen Apple, which almost single-handedly brought the Mobile Web to life in 2008.

Looking back on 2008, we can definitely call it the year of the Mobile Web. That designation, in large part, is due to the success of the iPhone. Although the iPhone was originally launched in 2007, it wasn't until mid-2008 that the 3G version debuted, bringing with it the faster internet speeds that finally made the device a usable mobile computing platform.

There is no doubt that the iPhone led to a trickle-down effect that influenced nearly every aspect of both handset development and the mobile web itself. Every manufacturer is looking for an "iPhone killer," everyone is dong an app store, and web sites themselves are becoming iPhone-friendly. Meanwhile, mobile app developers are reaping the rewards of having a new platform on which they can develop.

Earlier this month we noted that Barack Obama's Presidential transition site Change.gov had added OpenID login for commenters and that the site had traded the traditional copyright for the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Last week, the iPhone app for Change.gov was added to Apple's Web apps page, thanks to the Creative Commons license.